Integrated Reasoning: The Future of the GMAT

Today’s post is written by Dan Clark and brought to you by MBA House. To learn more about MBA House, visit the website (and find info on an MBA House promotion on our Resources page) 

Recently the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) made the largest change to the GMAT since the introduction of the Computer Adaptive Test (CAT) almost fifteen years ago. Though, the GMAT has long been a successful indicator of academic success in business school, the old format never assessed one’s ability to solve problems that required insights across disciplines. After a global survey of over 740 management program faculty members, it became clear that the GMAT’s overly compartmentalized approach was failing to provide admissions committees with adequate information to evaluate potential students. In the GMAC’s own words: “Today’s business and organizations demand managers who can make sound decisions, discern patterns, and combine verbal and quantitative reasoning to solve problems.”  Thus in June 2012, the Integrated Reasoning section was added to the GMAT in an attempt to make the exam more relevant to today’s business environment.

The 30-minute long Integrated Reasoning portion of the exam replaces the Analysis of an Issue analytical writing assessment. Integrated Reasoning follows the Analysis of an Argument essay and precedes the Quantitative section of the exam. It features 12 questions, most of which require the test-taker to provide multiple responses. Questions are of varying difficulty, but the section is non-adaptive – the questions do not become more difficult as one performs well, and they do not become easier as one performs poorly. Though answers often have multiple parts, no partial credit is awarded: a candidate must provide the correct response to all parts of given question to receive any credit.  A final score from 1-8 is given based on the number of correct responses and the difficulty of the questions. This score is not provided immediately after the exam, but is sent to test-takers a few weeks after along with their marks on the analytical writing assessment.

The 12 questions will fall into one of four categories:

• Multi-source reasoning
• Table analysis
• Two-part analysis
• Graphics interpretation

A multi-source reasoning question provides the test-taker with several pages of information detailing some fictional scenario. The information will be broken up into different tabs that can be toggled through by clicking on the titles with the mouse. Questions may force the candidate to infer knowledge from the text qualitatively or it may require the candidate to analyze the situation quantitatively. A single multi-source reasoning prompt may cover several of the 12 Integrated Reasoning questions.

A Table-analysis question provides the test-taker with a table that can be sorted by column via an interactive drop-down menu. The candidate must evaluate the validity of certain statements based on information from the table.

A two-part analysis problem has the candidate select to two separate, but related, answers from a single pool of possible responses.

Graphics interpretation problems require the candidate to decipher a graph or graphical image.  The graphs may be standard (e.g., bar graphs, Venn diagrams, etc.), but may also be of the GMAC’s own design.

Though the Integrated Reasoning section attempts ultimately to provide a useful statistic to business school admissions departments, it’s simply too new for programs to give the score much weight.  Stanford made this statement regarding the new section:

…IR is new to us, too, and it’s going to take us (and our peer schools) some time before we know how to interpret it…For this application year, we will see your IR score if you have taken the new GMAT, but will focus on the verbal quantitative, AWA, and total scores.

So for now, test takers need not lose sleep over these changes; they aren’t going to influence admissions in any major way during these first few experimental years.  That said, the next generation of the GMAT has begun.